A police officer stands guard as a health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child at a neighbourhood of Lahore, Pakistan Monday, April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child in a school in Lahore, Pakistan Monday, April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child in a school in Lahore, Pakistan Monday, April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
A police officer stands guard as a health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child at a neighbourhood of Lahore, Pakistan Monday, April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan began Monday a weeklong second nationwide vaccination campaign aimed at protecting 45 million children from polio, officials said.
According to the World Health Organization, Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only two countries where the hasn’t been stopped,
Since January, Pakistan has reported only six polio cases. Last year, the South Asian country witnessed a surge in polio cases, which jumped to 74, though it reported only one polio case in 2021.
Pakistan’s Health Minister, Mustafa Kamal, has urged parents to cooperate with the medical staff, who visit door-to-door to vaccinate children.
Health workers are who falsely claim that vaccination efforts are part of a Western plot to sterilize Muslim children.
On Monday, police killed a militant when he opened fire on officers assigned to protect health workers on the polio drive in Azam Warsak, a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to local police chief, Alamgir Mahsud. He said all the officers were unharmed.
Since the 1990s, more than 200 polio workers and the police assigned to protect them have been killed in attacks.
